City - Regular Meeting

All right, live and coming to you here from Pacific Grove, California. I welcome everyone tonight to the regular meeting of the Pacific Grove City Council. It is Wednesday, August 19th, 2026 at 6 PM at 610. Actually, we had some business to take care of earlier. We're in council chambers at 300 Forest Avenue, Pacific Grove, California, and I'm calling the meeting to order. All council members are present for the record. So that is the roll call. And I'll ask the Mayor Pro Tem to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible,

Thank you very much. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda tonight?

Motion to approve. Second.

All right, we have a motion by Amelia, second by Paduri. Any discussion of the agenda? and then we'll take a voice vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed hearing none passes unanimously we're going to go ahead and take the agenda as as stated and provided to the public we're on item two presentations we're hearing seeing none we're going to move on to item three council and staff announcements At this time, I'm going to return to our city attorney. Item 3A, report on closed session. Do you have any report on closed session? Thank you, Mayor.

With respect to the one item on closed session, an update was provided to council. Council gave direction to its negotiator, but no reportable action was taken.

Thank you very much. And at this time, I'll look to my colleagues, council members, for any announcements. Do council members have any announcements? Council Member Rao?

Thank you. In recognition of its last day, as most people know, Mr. Mogensen is, I want to say retiring, but I don't think that's the thought. He was following the pastures. And so I would just like to say thank you to him for his service and something for him to step forward.

Thank you, Matt. Appreciate everything you've done. I second those remarks and that announcement. Anyone else from the council? Okay, now I'll recognize our deputy city manager, Joyce Hallaby, if you have any staff announcements.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one staff announcement. As everybody is aware, the council has engaged Bob Murray and associates to assist with the recruitment of a permanent city manager. They have created a community survey where we are soliciting public feedback on traits and qualities that we're looking for in the next city manager. So we strongly encourage you to participate in the survey. It's available on the city's website, cityofpacificgrove.gov forward slash news, and it is available through September 6th. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anything else, Ms. Halaby from staff? no other staff comments thank you okay thank you very much all right so we'll go ahead and move on to general public comment tonight item four on the agenda general public comment deals with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the city that and the council that are not on the regular agenda tonight so um at this time i'll call for members of the public to step forward in chambers first and then online to make general public comment miss gibbs go ahead

My name is Peggy Gibbs, resident of Pacific Grove and founder of Pacific Grove Cares. Thank you for this opportunity to talk tonight. Two years ago, Pacific Grove Cares started in this community and is living proof that a town flourishes most when its residents and its city were hand in hand. We created together a dream that one of us could not have done alone. Pacific Grove Cares represents an encouraging development in our civic life. Residents and local government working together to strengthen the public spaces that define our community. And time and again, this partnership has shown that when a city empowers its volunteers, meaningful, measurable improvements follow. Over the past year, our collaboration has revitalized the key public assets of Chase Park West, Stillwell Garden at Caledonia Park and the Community Center Gardens and Courtyard. These spaces to be used by all residents of all ages. And through the ongoing work, we have been able to demonstrate effectiveness as a civic model where residents are not just recipients of city services, but active contributors to the city's wellbeing. Volunteers show up consistently, businesses donate materials, individuals and local organizations lend support. This is a shared stewardship and practice, a community taking responsibility with the city, providing the structure and partnership that makes sustained progress possible. This is where I want to thank not only the city council, but specifically Public Works, who have been great partners and help with our volunteers. Pacific Grove Cares also has been working closely with Clean California and Keep California Beautiful to fulfill requirements that designate a community as a clean California community. After completing these requirements, we were notified that our efforts have led to an official designation for the city of Pacific Grove. We are now the city of Pacific Grove recognized as a clean California community. This is done by the state agencies of Caltrans Clean California and Keep California Beautiful. Our joint efforts have strengthened Pacific Grove Standing as an affiliate also of Keep America Beautiful, signaling that our city is committed to maintaining high standards for cleanliness, beautification, and civic pride. We know that this model can be achieved when we work together, and we're grateful for all that we have been able to do together. We know that it has strengthened our civic identity, enhanced our public spaces, and demonstrates what happens when shared responsibility leads to shared success. So thank you for believing in this shared vision. We look forward to what we can do in the future. This is a, I'm sorry. Oh, I was just going to show you what the sign is.

Okay.

Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much.

Hi, my name is Josh Stratton, California American Water's Coastal Division External Affairs Lead. I'm here tonight to inform you that we have updated our California American Water Emergency Response Plan, or ERP. We welcome ongoing coordination with city and county staff, and if you would like additional information or a deeper discussion about any component of the plan, please do not hesitate to contact me. The ERP outlines how we protect, operate, and restore service in our water and wastewater systems during an emergency. It covers critical system components, reporting and notification procedures, security protocols, response actions, and the use of standardized emergency management systems or SEMS within the incident command system framework. The priorities of the ERP are to first protect human life, followed by protecting the environment, property, and maintenance of essential water and wastewater system operations. While we hope these plans are rarely needed, our responsibility is to be fully prepared. In the event of an emergency, this plan ensures that we can respond effectively and maintain or restore service, including provide backup water supplies when necessary. Thank you for your time and allowing me to present this overview. We value our partnership with Pacific Grove and California American Water remains committed to ensuring the safety and resilience of our water systems. We appreciate the opportunity to share this information with you this evening and are happy to meet with you or your teams to review more detail. You can reach me at josh.stratton at amwater.com or 831-435-6015. or by mail at 511 Forest Lodge Road, Pacific Grove, 93950, your city.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Josh.

good evening honorable mayor city council members my name is jonathan gill i'm the secretary for this for the pacific grove city employee association the city and the gea are at an impasse in regards to our mou agreement this is something that affects every gea employee and ultimately the city as a whole Fair and competitive compensation. The cost of living continues to rise. Rent, gasoline, groceries, utilities, and other basic necessities are becoming more expensive. Our members are feeling that pressure every day, and we're not asking for anything unreasonable. We're asking for a modest cost of living adjustment that allows employees to keep pace with inflation. At the same time, GEA believes the city is in a stronger financial position than the public is led to believe. According to the city's 2025 audit, the unrestricted fund balance is approximately $17.45 million, representing 55.86% of the fiscal year 2024-25 expenditures. That is substantially above the city's own policy of maintaining reserves equal to 25% of expenditures, and it exceeds the minimum recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association. In other words, the city has healthy reserves and a solid financial foundation. That's why it's difficult to understand when the city has budgeted for a 3% employee COLA in the current fiscal year, yet it is proposing 0% for GEA employees. Our members should not be treated as an afterthought. The city is also about to benefit from significant revenue generated by the new hotel. While we understand the importance of responsible budgeting and planning for the future, It is important to recognize that the city's financial outlook includes opportunities for new revenue. The city can afford to provide GEA employees with a reasonable cost of living adjustment. Compensation isn't just about wages. Health insurance costs are projected to increase by another 7 plus percent in 2027, with employees expected to bear the brunt of this share of that increase. When the cost of medical insurance goes up while wages remain stagnant, employees effectively receive a pay cut. Even if the number on a paycheck stays the same, the amount left over after paying for essential expenses continue to shrink. There is another important issue we cannot ignore, competitiveness. The city is falling behind other local government agencies when it comes to both pay and benefits. According to a compensation study conducted by Mistogny and Holstead in March of 2026, the total compensation package for the gea members is on average approximately 30 below comparable local government agencies the city's contribution towards health insurance is more than a thousand dollars below the con average contribution per employee which is provided by other local government agencies in the area those numbers have real consequences to all of our employees and members here in the city i thank you for your time thank you

Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Gary McCown, president of the General Employee Association. The numbers that Jonathan was previously speaking about have real consequences. We are seeing a serious recruitment and retention problem. The city is losing talented, experienced employees to other agencies that offer better compensation packages. Every time a good employee walks out the door, the city loses institutional knowledge, experience and investment in that employee's training. replacing those employees cost money it is estimated that it can take up to 200 of the employee's salary to replace the employee's position therefore affecting the budget and the city's ability to serve the residents effectively Most importantly, it affects the quality and continuity of services provided to the community. The GEA employees want to work for the city. They want to build their careers here. They want to provide excellent service to the residents of this community, but there has to be a reason for talented employees to stay. Competitive compensation is not a luxury. It is a basic requirement for recruiting and retaining a qualified workforce. We are therefore asking the city for two essential items, an adequate cost of living increase and coverage for the rising costs of medical insurance. The GEA's last best final offer is a modest and reasonable request considering the city's strong financial reserves, the city's existing budget, the need to remain competitive with neighboring agencies and the very real economic pressures facing our employees. We're asking the city to recognize the value of its employees and invest in people who keep this organization running. We don't want further labor strife. We want to reach a fair agreement. The city can afford to do this. The question is whether it is willing to make the investment in its employees that is necessary to retain a strong, experienced, and dedicated workforce. The GEA employees deserve to be treated fairly. They deserve compensation that reflects the rising cost of living, the increased cost of health care, and the competitive realities of the local government workforce. We're asking the city to do the right thing, invest in its employees, remain competitive, and reach a fair agreement with the GEA. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Chambers. Continue to take Chambers comment.

City Council, my name is Mike Gibbs. I'm a resident of Pacific Grove and a member of Pacific Grove Cares. I'm just here tonight to tell a story. Lori, I'm not going to tell the same one I told the other night, but this is a story about one of our volunteers. Our job is to cultivate plants and create new landscaping but really it's more than that we cultivate people in relationships we have 50 volunteers and large number of donors and we're out every day so i want to tell you about one of our volunteers her name is sandy and sandy uh is 84. she was born before pearl harbor You may have seen her sitting on the sidewalk in front of the community center with a flathead screwdriver, an old wooden handle, one of the big long ones like this, digging weeds out of the crevices at the community center. You can see pictures on our website of this. I asked her one day, Sandy, what in the world are you doing? We've got tools. We've got things. We've got, you know, implements that you can do this with. And she said, Mike, my dad gave me this screwdriver. Really? So that's what you use. She said, my dad taught me that a flat head screwdriver can do many things. Some of you won't know this. It can gap a spark plug. Joe, you probably know this. On a tractor. It can fix a fence. It can pull weeds. It can do other things. And I've kept it all of these years. This was my dad's screwdriver. She said, I was the oldest of five on a wheat farm in North Dakota. And everybody had to do anything. Times were tough. and you were never too old or too young to pitch in. So I said, that's why you're here at the age of 84, sitting on the sidewalk, digging weeds out at the community center. She said, yes, Mike, I am. And so we have lots of stories like this, and those are more important to me perhaps than just making public spaces look good. So you'll hear more of these stories There's a lot of other people out there doing crazy work for the city of Pacific Grove. So thank you for your work. You're cultivating relationships. You're cultivating people who are going to be wanting to move and stay in Pacific Grove with grace and goodwill for everybody, whether you're on the city council or a volunteer for Pacific Grove. So grab your screwdriver. We have another project coming up.

We'll invite you out.

You can help us pull weeds and do other kinds of things that are going to make a Pacific Grove even more beautiful than it already is. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Nice to see you all back. I'm Christy Italiano-Thomas, and I'm just bringing up this subject now early, but hopefully it will get on a CIP for next year and get on your radar because not one of you have ever brought this up, and that is what I see as continued blind eye and denial regarding our lack of adequate public restroom facilities. So I'm starting the dialogue now. I really am thankful to Mr. Goh for taking his time and explaining and answering questions that I had about how you go about this. I did not realize that in 22, 23, Crespi Pond Bathroom Remodels was on his radar and he had a plan and it was struck down for historical reasons. But be that as it may, obviously, you know how far And how bad Crespi Pond, well, maybe you don't know, I don't know. But at some point, the administration, you, and the Chamber of Commerce, to me, has to see that we don't have public restroom facilities for the number of people that visit this city, and particularly our premier destination, Point of Lovers Point. A few weeks ago, I sent you all a picture. Dan's the only one who... responded to me it wasn't a holiday it wasn't a special event it wasn't a three-day weekend and the line for that restroom was extended past the cafe i i live on pine so i bike and walk there every day the same thing was on sunday so obviously visitors don't know they could run how inconvenient is it to run over to caledonia and how in the world would they know they could well they can't run up to jewel park because that's another restroom that's open on farmer's market night um or the library or can you imagine having your kids and family on Lovers Point and running up to the city hall? So it's not a matter of convenience anymore to me is what they're relying on this one bathroom. It's now a public health and sanitation issue and continuing to say that you can't afford this is not an adequate response. So there has to be a way to start addressing this, getting it on the right, moving forward. Because you keep, you know, we keep getting marketed. Marketing is on and on. And, you know, the visitors are even more and more. And, you know, Mr. Goh did explain to me, I still remember, and maybe many of you do, that old one on Lovers Point Park. Well, there's still water and sewer there. So I just think it has to be addressed. It's starting to be a sanitation issue. I've seen people like, you know, in 2014, Carmel received $150,000 grant from the California State Coastal Conservancy. So that might be an option. But, you know, thank you so much for the call.

we do not have any online public comment okay thank you very much we're going to go and close public comment we've got a lot of business to do tonight we're going to move on to the consent agenda this is a agenda that deals with routine and non-controversial matters and includes action on resolutions ordinances and other public hearings for which testimony is not anticipated at this time uh do we have anyone uh any member of the council wishing to pull an item okay and do we have any member of the public wishing to pull a consent agenda item nobody online okay um i'll entertain a motion at this time second motion on consent by ralph second by emilio any further discussion seeing them take a voice vote all in favor say aye aye any opposed passes unanimously thank you very much we'll move on to item 11a the business of the night regular agenda the public hearing first item is the city of pacific grove's conflict of interest code And tonight it'll be Stephanie Areola.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So good evening, Mr. Mayor Smith, members of the council, and members of the public. The Political Reform Act of 1974 requires local governments to adopt and maintain a conflict of interest code, Government Code 87300. to designate all positions that make or participate in the making of the governmental decisions and assign specific disclosure categories to each position. Additionally, the act requires every agency to review this code on a bi-annual basis to ensure the code reflects the organization's current staffing and submit an amended code if necessary. The city's conflict of interest code was last amended in 2022. There were no amendments made in 2024. The city clerk's review of the code since have revealed revisions due to the addition of positions not previously listed. As referenced in the ordinance, the deputy city manager was added to category one, and the principal planner, principal civil engineer, and urban forester were added to category two. Staff requests council approve the recommended action, and this concludes staff report. Thank you.

thank you very much i'm going to take out to the public anyone in chambers are online wishing to speak on item 11a this is our conflict of interest code uh updates i didn't expect to see a huge amount of people who want to talk about this but you never know somebody might like the conflict of interest code um okay i can bring back to the council uh for discussion and action on the item this is a simple uh update of our designated employees within the code and those that will have to provide financial information to the city in order to continue working. So does anyone have motion on this? Yes. Councilman Rowe. Oh, go ahead. I move recommend action. Thank you. Second by Emilio. Okay. Any other discussion? All right. Seeing none, we'll take a voice vote. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any oppose passes unanimously. Thank you very much to the city clerk's office for putting that together. Great job. And now at this time, we are moving on to item 12A, which is Chinese Pavilion Project. And we have Amy Colony present this evening to take the item.

Amy Colony, Good evening honorable mayor Smith and Council members, thank you for having me tonight, my name is amy colony and I am the program manager for the public works department i'm here tonight to provide an update on the Chinese pavilion and moon gate project. I wanted to start out by going over a brief background of the project. It's been in progress for four years now. So I wanted to get everyone up to date and provide contextual background of the evolution of the project. So back in About July of 2022, the Monterey Bay Chinese Association approached the city with the idea of gifting a Chinese pavilion to the city to represent and honor the history of Chinese Americans in this community. So it was first brought to the Beautification and Natural Resources Committee in the summer of 2022 with the idea of it being a public art project that would be installed along potentially donated land along the coastline. At that time, around December of 2022, the city requested that the Monterey Bay Chinese Association continue researching other locations as that was not supported at that time. In September of 2023, the Monterey Bay Chinese Association began working with the Recreation Board, and under the leadership of the Recreation Board Chair at that time, they researched other locations within city-owned parks throughout the city. They determined at that time that Elmary Dyke Park was the most suitable location, and that they also wanted to expand the project to include a traditional Chinese moon gate at the entrance of the park. At this point is where I came in to the picture to work with the Recreation Board Chair and the Monterey Bay Chinese Association by presenting to City Council at the December 20th, 2023 meeting with the proposed recommended site of Elmory Dyke Park. At that time, the city council really wanted us to come back with a more comprehensive pros and cons list of each location, specifically looking at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History as an option. So over that spring, that is what we did. We thoroughly looked at Caledonia Park. We looked at Esplanade Park, of course, Elmery Dyke Park. We also revisited the Hopkins Marine Station land adjacent to the rec trail, as well as the history museum. I reported back to the council in April of 2024, and it was still recommended based on the pros and cons list that Elmary Dyke Park proved to be the most suitable location. At that time, the council did approve this location for the pavilion, including the Moongate, and the project was included in the 2425 capital improvement program. At this point, the Monterey Bay Chinese Association started moving forward with their fundraising campaign with a goal of raising $200,000. To date, they have raised $220,000. So they've done really well. Back in around March of 2025, city staff and Monterey Bay Chinese Association looked at hiring an architect to provide the preliminary conceptual designs to build the pavilion on site. So in March of 2025, we did enter into a contract with an architect to provide these initial designs. However, in June or so of 2025, we did dissolve that partnership to primarily two creative differences, but also the realization that that was going to be a quite costly endeavor to hire an architect to design and build on site in regards to sourcing materials and the complexities of that. So the Monterey Bay Chinese Association and city staff did a lot of research and meeting and pivoted to the idea of importing a prefabricated Chinese pavilion directly from China that would then be shipped in parts and constructed on site with the work of a licensed contractor. And this is actually something that in our research we found across the United States with other similar projects is that this is what other cities and organizations have done. So with this prefabricated pavilion, we realized we did need a landscape architect to help with site preparation and placement of the pavilion, as well as project management. So in October of 2025, we began working with a local landscape architect, Una Johnson, for these landscaping design consulting services. We've been working with her very closely, public work staff and the Monterey Bay Chinese Association over the last eight or nine months to come up with the architectural site plan that we will look at next. And so here is the architectural site plan. And I apologize, this is a CAD document. It doesn't translate very well to a PowerPoint presentation, but it is provided as a link in the agenda report that you can access and zoom in and get a sense of the better detail. But I'll do my best to try to point out with my clicker here, if you can see. The most important thing to take a look at There's a lot on here, but the basics of the project include the pavilion, which is the white circle here in the bottom right quadrant of the image. So you can see that this is a six-sided pavilion and it is proposed to be placed approximately, I would say 10 to 12 feet forward from where the original gazebo is located. And the reason for this is, as you can see, this type of pavilion has three accesses on all sides. So in order for it to be accessible by the public and to fit in that space, it was required to place it forward. Additionally, I wanted to point out that, well, if you're familiar with the park where the older gazebo is located, is in kind of an alcove set back. So the idea is since we're moving the pavilion forward, we're going to move that back retaining wall up to be in line with the other retaining wall. So it will be a much cleaner, more open, accessible space for the public. And we're hoping that it will provide a freer flow of movement of people around the pavilion. I also wanted to draw attention to the other integral part of the project, which is the Moon Gate. So that is over here on the east side of the park, on the right side of the image here, along 16th Street. I guess you would consider this probably the main entrance to the park. There is another entrance on 17th Street, but we're not going to be including that in this phase of the project. So we're going to be focusing on the 16th Street entry to the park. So currently there is a wooden arbor that you walk through and there is a current wooden fence that goes up the perimeter of the park up to the next property. So we're going to replace that or the plan is to replace that with a wooden moon gate and then also replace the wooden fence that goes up the side of the park. And I think those are the most important things to note here on this architectural site plan. Like I said, there's a lot of wish lists here, but those are the basics of the project. The pavilion and the moon gate and moving the retaining wall, replacing the retaining wall with a concrete structure because the retaining wall there is deteriorating. So we'll go on to next to the artistic renderings that were provided by Una Johnson's team. So the first one we're looking at is a street view from 16th Street looking at the Moon Gate and a peek of what the grounds could potentially look like. As I mentioned, the Moon Gate is would be made of wood, kind of mirroring what is currently there, as well as the fence going up along 16th Street. The fence will be deer friendly. We will adhere to all city codes regarding height and structure to make sure that it's safe for deer. As I mentioned, the replacing of the retaining wall along the backside of the pavilion and up along the side where it's supporting the landscaping, that's currently deteriorating and the idea is to replace it with concrete walls with hopefully adding some seating along those concrete walls for the public. Also not shown here, but a very important part of the project is the inclusion of interpretive panels for education about the history and contributions of Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants to this area to compliment the pavilion in the Moon Gate. As funds allow, we would like to include some Chinese garden landscaping. Here Una has put in some example of bamboo behind the pavilion. We will also plan to put down new decomposed granite on the space as well to even that out and do some leveling as needed for the pavilion. So the idea for this space is twofold. It is, on one hand, it's a space for gathering. It's a place for the public to gather and hopefully host events, hopefully in conjunction with the Chautauqua Hall renovation project. Una Johnson is the landscape architect who we are working with. She's also the landscape architect for the Chautauqua Hall renovation project. And it's very important to her and for us to make sure that it is a seamless flow between the two projects and they work harmoniously together to provide a captivating and exciting place for the public to visit. And in the future, as funds allow or in the next phase, we would like to also add decorative lighting and other elements to elevate the use of the park. So here's an artistic rendering focusing on just the pavilion. So as I mentioned, the pavilion would be prefabricated from a manufacturer in China. It'll be shipped in parts and constructed on site by a licensed contractor. It measures approximately 24 feet tall by 14 feet at the base in diameter. It is made of aluminum which will hopefully withstand our coastal climate and it's painted in the traditional red and green colors of Chinese pavilions that you see in China. It's a two-tiered hexagon shape and there will be interior benches in the pavilion to encourage people to sit in there and socialize, have lunch, enjoy the space. We also have plans for additional seating, which you can see some of the seating against the retaining wall, which I mentioned, but we will have some other seating places throughout the park for people to enjoy their lunch, visit with friends, enjoy the park. And the Chinese Pavilion will be mounted on a concrete platform, which is about two feet tall. It will have stairs at the three entrances. We are taking ADA accessibility into account. So next steps, depending on the approval of this concept, the hope is to return to city council in the fall with a financial agreement between the city and the Monterey Bay Chinese Association for reimbursements. The project is to be funded in total by their fundraising efforts. So the city will be reimbursed for those costs. Once that's finalized, then the Chinese Association can proceed with ordering the pavilion from China, and staff can go out to bid for project construction. Once those two things are underway, I plan to return to City Council with the award of bid for construction, as well as the final construction plans. the hope is to begin site demo and construction in the winter spring of 2027 completion of the project spring summer 2027. that concludes my presentation this evening um i'm happy to answer any questions thank you thank you very much uh we'll go ahead and go out to the public if i know there's people here from the that are associated with the project if you'd like to come forward you'll have three minutes to speak

and then we'll go online if there's anyone online you and the council members i'm charles chad the chair of the pavilion special pavilion committee it's been four years since when i presented proposed to do that and i saw the council member have Half of you was there, half of them are new. And I'm so happy to the project is progressing not fast enough, but progressing well. Consider being changing like two, three architects. And the special thanks to the support of the city and especially Amy, the project manager, Dan, and other people committee members, Michael and Yongling, and with the Monterey Bay Chinese Association. And we're looking forward to the completion of the projects. So we're really looking forward to uh the council's approval and continued support and we're looking forward to have the paveri standing up and two blocks down and we can all enjoy and we're adding a real landmark to the city of pg And also it will increase the cooperation between the City of Council and the Monterey Bay Chinese Association as we continue afterwards to maintain and keep it as beautiful as it can be. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

City Council members, my name is Michael Ibsen. It has been a pleasure to follow the progress of the Chinese Pavilion Project. The Monterey Bay Chinese Association has put much effort into this, raising capital, identifying potential suppliers of the pavilion, and working closely with Una Johnson on the landscaping design. Throughout this process, Dan Goh, Director of Public Works and Amy Colony, Program Manager, have provided leadership on the framework for the project, explaining the technical requirements for construction and focusing attention on the previous comments of the City Council. You will note that the Moon Gate in the new design replaces a heavy concrete version with a less imposing version. This project will honor Chinese families with the Monterey Peninsula being the earliest locale in the entire United States where Chinese families, men, women, and children resided. The largest settlement being at the site of the Hopkins Marine Station, making it truly unique. The families were the pioneers of commercial fishing in all of Monterey Bay, including squid fishing, Chinese also played a role in building the railway that reached all the way to Asilomar from San Francisco and a reservoir off of David Avenue, which is now the Cal-Am Corporation Yard, as well as the 17 mile drive. This culminates in restoring an important part of the history of Pacific Grove and will add to the sites that residents and visitors will enjoy. The Pavilion Plaza will be a wonderful place to relax, to provide insight to local history for schools, to host Chinese festivals, and enrich the entire community. Thank you, City Council, for your farsightedness, leadership, and support. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Yonglin Beeman, Vice President of Monterey Bay Chinese Association. On behalf of the Association, I want to express our sincere gratitude to the city government for your support, especially to Public Works for their dedication to working with us on the Chinese Pavilion. Dan and Amy, your good work and commitment means so much to our community. We hope to proceed with the project implementation as soon as possible after this meeting. Thank you for your continued partnership to build this important landmark in Pacific Grove. Thank you.

Thank you.

Erin Consul, I'm Sally Moore. And I really appreciate the fact that they are doing the openness of the Moon Gate. That's just so soft to be by Chautauqua Hall. I would ask that somewhere in all their signage and descriptions that they would put something about Elmarie Dyke. That is her open space. And since she was Mrs. Pacific Grove, it would be nice to have a little something honoring her as well. So I really appreciate this project. Looking forward to seeing it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone online? Madam Clerk?

Ms. Dahmer?

Thank you. I remember when this first project started, and boy, has it come a long way. And yes, I agree with Sally. This is a lovely soft Moongate. It's going in the right direction. I hope you continue with it. And it's such a lovely thing that's happening now. And I'd like to say be very careful with the bamboo that it doesn't get away with you because we know what happens in gardens. And we only have so many volunteers. So thank you very much.

Anyone else?

A couple more.

Ms. Marquardt?

Can you hear me, please? Yes. Okay. There is a triple echo on Zoom. I hear my voice three times. I have heard everybody speak three times. Can anybody please adjust the audio? Thank you.

Anyone else?

We do not have any more public comment.

Okay, thank you very much. We're going to close public comment on the item 12A. Bring it back to the council for discussion. Mayor Pro Tem, Amelia.

Yes, I think this is a great project. I've seen it through the years and I'm very supportive of this particular project. And thanks to the NBCA for doing such a wonderful job and all your volunteers and looking forward to seeing the project complete. It's super.

Thank you. Council Member Garfield.

Thank you, Your Honor, and truly appreciate both the motivation and the work that you've done. I have great appreciation for how hard it is to raise money, and you've done a great job. So to that point, I know you've been through some architectural adventures with architects, and you've raised $220,000. How much do you have left?

Does anybody know?

We have all of it left.

All of it left. Yes. Okay. I mean, how did you manage that? Lessons for the rest of us. So good. That's good. Because, you know, projects do tend to get more expansive than any of us think. So I'm the liaison to the Chautauqua Hall project. And I will say that I am not completely sure that Una's plans are between the pavilion and Chautauqua Hall have been through the whole Chautauqua Hall group looking at them. And I would like for us to be sure that everyone's on the same page so that as you've said, it really is seamless. And that the space between the pavilion and Chautauqua Hall is usable for both sides. and that it won't take long, but I'd really like for us to make sure that the Chautauqua Hall Planning and Hunter Eldridge sees this as a good extension. And the reason I mentioned it is because in our last meeting, we talked very specifically about what you're seeing here is this patio that has a tree in the middle of it, how the flow of people at an event would go outside of Chautauqua Hall into the Elmary Dyke facility so that it's really an attractive part of Chautauqua Hall. And so I'm asking if we could make sure that that's in place. Ms. Johnson may very well be the right person to coordinate that, but I just don't think it's done yet. So I appreciate you answering the question about the cost. Good job. And how big is that pavilion, you think? Because the little tiny diagram, I can't read it.

The dimensions of the pavilion, it is in and of itself approximately 24 feet tall. It will be placed on a two-foot concrete platform, so 26, 27 feet tall. The base where the bottom is is 14 feet in diameter. And then I didn't mention, but I think the first tier roof is the farthest reaching and its diameter is approximately 23 feet.

So the width of it, so the interior, is roughly similar to the current gazebo?

I would say so, yes.

OK, move forward. But what I really wanted to hear about, and I'm glad you mentioned it, was that there's seating inside of it. I've seen lots of people using the inside of that gazebo for a little gathering, and I wanted to make sure that we still maintained that. I'm glad to hear that. I appreciate the thoroughness of your presentation because it really did answer my questions about that. so i think you've done a great job i appreciate the work that amy's put into it and and mr go and miss colony um and more than i can say i appreciate the work you're putting into this um so if we can do that chautauqua hall mel that would make me feel very good thank you i'll let you know councilmember garfield that we've already had those conversations we've met on site with hunter and una

and we're working to make that seamless transition so you wouldn't even know you were going from one site to the next. That's our goal.

Good. That's a good goal. Thank you. All right, Council Member Rowe.

thank you for that mr go because that answered uh one question that i had and i can see this being used if you had a wedding or some other ceremony and then you were using chautauqua hall as your place for a reception making that seamless i think is really important to be able to utilize both of those spaces We didn't learn out the hard way that, and I thank Inga for bringing this up, but I had already made the note that we learned the hard way the difference between clumping and running bamboo. So my vote is for clumping. Yeah, running is really bad. On a separate note, I think that this is a really good extension of from the apology that the city made, and I believe it was 2023.

Thank you, Mr. Bedard.

Because he's a lot younger than I am. He's got a pretty good memory. I think that this is the natural progression of the rebuilding of the relationship between the city and the Chinese community. And I think that this is going to be an appropriate and a beautiful moment. place for people to gather. So I thank all the community, Mr. Ipsen, and everybody that's pushed forward with the MVCA to move this project forward. And I will make a motion when we're ready to approve this.

Okay.

Very good. Council Member Perry, thank you.

Thank you.

My memory is actually shot, but this is an event that I will never forget, 2022 and what we did. So thank you again. And I'm glad that we're here, like really continuing the thoughts that the city had at that point in time, taking it forward. This will be unique to BG, and I'm hoping that this will attract the deserved attention, not only to the project, but also to why the project exists in itself. So all good thoughts there. Thank you. And I'm also really appreciative of the fact that you've fundraised more than you asked for uh and and so my question is really knowing that so i've been on these some kind of similar projects uh elsewhere too like hearing about it and construction costs are ballooning all the time and we're looking at 2027 hopefully 2027. But if it goes on, we're going to face some increased costs. And so are we accounting for those costs is my first question. And related to cost itself, I also wanted to know, maybe the staff can tell me, This is a unique feature for us to attract and retain and have people cherish the moments, et cetera. We need to keep it clean. So there's an upkeep here. There's maintenance. And I wanted to see if that's going to be part of the whole exercise, too, when we have this relationship with the association.

Yes, in response to the maintenance, there is ongoing discussion about the Monterey Bay Chinese Association helping afterwards with their members to maintain the park. Myself, I'm also the volunteer program coordinator for the city, so I will definitely take ownership and pride in keeping that area as well-maintained as possible. With the current volunteers we have, PG CARES was just here, I'm sure they would love to help as well.

thank you and actually well while you were actually recounting like over the years what has happened it's almost like we built a history even without getting to the point of actually constructing it so it's going to add to the history here but um just a dumb question for me knowing that this is a pre-fabricated kind of like item coming from elsewhere obviously not from here, not from this country. So do we have to have special building codes or building code compliance to make sure everything is set? Is that already taken into account?

Yes, it is taken into account. As soon as we can place the deposit on the pavilion, as soon as we can place the deposit on the pavilion, we will receive more detailed specs from the manufacturer. At that point, UNA has been working with a structural engineer to review them to make sure that they adhere to all city codes, U.S. standards for construction.

Okay, awesome. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you, Lori, Councilman McDonald, and then Mayor Pertone after.

Thank you so much. And I just wanted to thank the Monterey Bay Chinese Association again for this beautiful gift to the city. You're gifting it to us with your donations, but we also have the honor of representing our history and finally telling that history that was so important to Pacific Grove and what we are today. So thank you so very much for that. And thank you for listening to the concerns people had about the Moon Gate. I think this really nicely incorporates what's already there. and just really, I think, will enhance the Chautauqua Hall project. So it's been another great example. It's kind of a night of great examples of community working together with city staff to really build something special for Pacific Grove. Thank you so much for mentioning about the interpretive science. I think that's great because that will really further enhance that understanding from the public of how much contribution our Chinese ancestors have made here and so I really appreciate that. The comment about adding something about Elmery Dyke I think will be very important too since it's the park plus the pavilion and it'll be a great way to kind of tie in the two worlds. So appreciate that much. Also appreciate that you mentioned the seating because currently there are the picnic tables and that doesn't look nice and elegant. So, but it sounds like you have some other, because I thought that would be important for people to still be able to sit and gather. So I appreciate that that is being worked into the design as well and that it really is being integrated the two projects together. So it flows seamlessly together, becomes an extension of each other, but also provides a really place for peace, respite and reflection for tourists and locals alike. So thank you.

Thank you. May I put our time, Emilio?

Yeah, I know Council Member Rao was going to, but I think we can't forget it.

Okay.

We can't forget about the Chinese, what they've contributed, just like MacDonald had mentioned. So I wanted to approve the landscape architectural design and artistic renderings for this project. And that's my motion.

Second. We have a motion by Emilio, second by Rao. Any further discussion? I'll just throw in 1 comment. I appreciate all the work that. You did miss colony and Mr. go and all the folks from the Monterey Bay Chinese Association. Thank you for doing all the legwork on this and it's a great. Example of partnering with community members to get something done. Really? That's really great for the community and I do like, I really like the moon gate. So, you know, I'm excited about it. Okay, let's take a voice vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. Thank you so much. We're going to go on to item 12B. We're going to go on to item 12B. This is another important item, a lot of important ones tonight. Employment agreement of retired annuitant inner city manager. And I'm going to recognize our city attorney to take us through item 12B.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Before you is an agreement, an employment agreement for interim city manager with Richard Rierig, better known to most as Chip Rierig, and working with the subcommittee that you all appointed. This has been discussed and vetted with Mr. Rierig, who is here tonight. It's a standard employment agreement. by its terms will expire when the full-time city manager is appointed or if mr rear kids his maximum hours uh as a retired annuitant other than that um there are standard provisions in there as far as the city manager's duties to continue on um and uh the um Compensation is there. And other than that, it's a pretty standard employment agreement, not different than other ones that you've approved in the past and not so recent past for a city manager. So this is sort of the stopgap measure. And my understanding is recruitment's underway. But for now, this is the agreement Mr. Rear has reviewed and approved.

Thank you so much. I'll go ahead and take it out to the public for comment on the item.

We do not have any online public comment.

Okay, we're going to bring it back to the council for discussion and action on the appointment of Chip Rerig as the former administrator for the city of city administrator for the city of Carmel for many years to lead us as our interim city manager while we search for a permanent city manager. So that's what that's what we're doing. So any council members wishing to make comment, go ahead now.

very shortly. Welcome, and we're looking forward to getting to work.

Go ahead, Chaps.

I'd like to take a moment to thank the subcommittee for doing the work because I was gone and I came back and this is already here and you've got the best candidate. So thank you and looking forward to working with you, Chip. Hoping to take what you have in Carmel and combine that with PG and see what we can do next. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Joe, go ahead. I guess I could refer him to Chip.

okay uh i'm all for this also okay sorry um all right well obviously since i was on the subcommittee i'm also in favor so you know we're um so uh we at any at this point if anyone would like to make further comment or make a motion to recommend or third recommended action

I just would personally like to say thank you for taking this on. We have great momentum in the city and I feel really comfortable with the handoff. And I think that having your experience to come along behind that, I think the beauty of this is that we won't lose. anything as we move through this transition. So thank you for willing to come out of retirement. And thank you, Mr. Robinson, for everything that he did for the city. And I think we're ready to move forward. And I would make the motion unless Mayor Pro Tem would like to do that, and I know Council Member McDonald would also like to make a comment, but I would recommend a program resolution employment agreement appointing Chip Rarig as the retired annuitant to temporarily fill the city manager's position.

Second it.

Right. We have a motion and a second discussion on the motion. Go ahead.

Just one comment. Thanks. Yeah. And I also wanted to thank the subcommittee who worked on it because they brought us for the information, but it was a full council decision. And so that was great. They brought the information for us. We had great discussion. We're really happy to have somebody coming on who not only knows the region, but has coastal background and lives in and loves our community. So thank you so much.

All right, we'll go ahead. Anyone else? Okay, we'll go ahead and take a voice vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. Welcome, Mr. Rarig. Would you like to come forward and say anything? A brief introduction here?

No.

Councilmember, thank you. Thank you, Council, so much. I am Chip Rarig. For those of you who I haven't met, I'm looking forward to working with you. I already have some of your updates on my calendar, Mayor and Councilmember Garfield, but looking forward to meeting with you. And if you do have a day job, like I'll have again, We can do it online. I'm looking forward to working with the staff team. I get to finally say we, which is really nice. I was over the hill for a decade and I couldn't say we because I didn't live in Carmel, but I am a proud Bergrovian. My children go to school here. my my wife uh is here she's uh the 100 100 my better half so i get to say we have a wonderful staff with the city i'm looking forward to working with and meeting uh meeting with um and the community um again i i i can tell you the color of the house at san carlos and 11th and carmel and i have to think about two streets down from me which is gibson so i'm looking forward to really kind of reconnecting with my own community my wife did tell me recently she reminded me of a ben franklin quote which is it's less important what you say than what you do and so i hope i hope your vote is a vote of confidence for me that i i will be trying to provide value and contribute to the community. I'm really excited. This is not something I would do for any other community. Please trust me. So I'm looking forward to working with you in any capacity, driving the mission forward, the momentum that you do have. And a real hearty thanks to my friend and colleague, Matt Mogenson, again, for his leadership in this community, our community for the last couple of years. So thank you, Council. Looking forward to working with you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Rourke. Thank you. yeah thank you for the comments councilman also about uh the momentum and i think it's a great thing and we have going right now and i really look forward to working with mr rare uh for the for the for the next few months at least so all right thank you so much i'll move on to arena 12c i believe 12 see, we're looking at this special events policy. It's policy 900 dash 1 and we'll recognize deputy city manager. Daniel go.

Thank you. Mayor Smith members of the city council, and I would usually be accompanied by Miss Clark, our recreation manager, but she had a. Previous obligation tonight with her family, so I'm definitely in here pitch hitting tonight for her. So tonight I will be presenting the special events policy to you. So just a little bit of background. The current special event policy outlines the process for application submission, how the events are classified, billed, and then ultimately how they're approved at the board's commissions and the city council level. Special event calendar runs on a fiscal year cycle. So our fiscal year is obviously July 1 through June 30th. but complete applications are due November 30th of the prior year. So like three, four, five, six months prior to. Applications are reviewed by city staff, and then they're presented to the recreation board, to the planning commission, because most or some of them fall within the coastal zone and need a coastal development permit, and then ultimately city council for approval. There's two different types of classifications of special events. There's just your normal special event, which require exclusive use of city property and support from police, fire, or public works. Those events are billed at full cost recovery rate for all of the city staff support and also facility equipment use and any fees associated with rentals. Then there's our city sponsored events. Those include our traditional events that are primarily hosted by the Chamber of Commerce, school district, the city, or are deemed historic. All costs associated with our city sponsored events, including staff time, are waived. So this current year calendar, because now we're in the current year, right? has 22 city sponsored events and seven full cost recovery events for a total of 29, which equates, I rounded up for purposes of this presentation, to about $176,000. Of the seven full cost recovery events, we recoup about $80,000. So we're subsidizing approximately $100,000 annually, primarily on labor. so why are we here the special events will reviewing the policy 900 the special event policy provides the framework to ensure a healthy and financially feasible balance that remains between the number of special events the ability of our staff to conduct the events our neighborhoods parks and facilities At the April 1st, 2026 city council meeting, when staff presented the fiscal year 2627 events calendar, the council requested a review of policy 900-1, which is a special events policy, and hence why we're returning to the city council tonight. So this presentation tonight aims to initiate a high level conversation on potential areas for policy revisions. We're not here, don't have a red line version of the policy tonight, but that could come back if it's the desire of the city council. And there are three general areas that we would like you to explore tonight or provide feedback or comments on. So the first one would be a concentration of special events. So would we like to cap the number of special events in a specific time period, the day, a week, or a month? I will state that a majority of our special events are all within like a seven-month time frame, right? So we just kicked off and they go all the way to like May, basically. Then we have a little lull and then we kick off again in like July, August time frame. So seven months is really when we have them. so again something to think about how do we do we want to like make sure that we just don't have them all like in a specific month time frame and then how much do we want to subsidize of these events so do we want to cap the amount of subsidy subsidization for the annual special events calendar do we want to say We don't want a hypothetical number, right? We're at $100,000 right now. Is that our cap? And we don't want to go above that number, right? And then it would be up to city staff to determine that to some extent yet to be determined, but we'll come back to you. Do we want to cap the amount of subsidies for any one city sponsored event? So an individual event. Or do we want to cap the number of subsidies for any one entity, like the school district or the city or so on and so forth?

And then...

One that's a challenge for city staff are these off-cycle submissions that we receive. So every year in November, city staff receives the applications for the events, we put them into the calendar. But then come, it never fails, come January, February, somebody says, oh, I want to do a run in March or April, and they submit an application. Right now, the current policy says we have to consider that if there's no other park or facility rentals that already have that facility booked, if there's not another special event within the proximity that would interfere, or if the application was received 150 days in advance of the requested date. So these off-cycle events really cause staff to have to pivot our priorities and then conduct significant review, right? For maybe something that... would be like at lover's point for 40 or 50 people. And if it's at lover's point, then I've got to get it through the recreation department. Then it's got to go back to planning commission and then ultimately to city council. So there's a lot of hands that need to touch that in a very quick and short timeframe. So do we want to, maybe eliminate these off-cycle submissions and you have your time friend to submit your application and that's that's it so those are the three areas we would like to receive some feedback on and we're also open to any other feedback the city council has so some options we have tonight is to do nothing and keep the policy as it is we always have that as an option right or you could request staff to explore changes to the policy and present them to the rec board and then subsequently come back to city council. So from the feedback we get this evening, city staff would redline the policy, take it to the rec board, get their feedback, and then ultimately bring that back to city council for consideration or more feedback and another revision. You could request staff to explore changes to the policy and then bring it directly back to the city council. or provide alternate direction, which is always an option. That concludes my presentation. My ears are open. These are the ideas that kind of myself, Ms. Clark, Ms. Halaby helped me quite a bit with this also that we thought of, but we're open to ideas or any concerns that maybe the council has or members of the public have about the policy. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Goh. Before we take public comment, I'm sorry, I'm going to call for a 10-minute break here. This will give us an opportunity. We'd like to visit with Mr. Rarig, still in the audience. So I intended to do that before, but I'm going to have a 10-minute break. So we'll come back at 8.33 with a meeting and get the comment on this item. Thank you.

7.33. 7.33.

I'll have a schedule. Recording stopped. recording in progress okay we are we are online again welcome back everyone it's 7 34 p.m we're back from a break we are in the middle of this of the item 12c special events policy and we broke just before public comment so if there's anyone online wishing to comment on the special events policy item 12c please do so at this time

Ms. Dahmer.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. We've certainly had some ups and downs with the special events policy over the years and how it's been used and abused. And I welcome Dango bringing up these changes or thoughts of changes because it does need to be revisited. We've had absolute personal projects move forward that cost the city a lot and we have had special events pop up so late in the season and then go through such a long process of trying to get one through and then finding that it shouldn't have gone through at all so i'm quite happy with the fact that i think the policy should be revisited to say that yeah no late submissions just Just have set dates for the special events. Get our calendar up and running. Don't clump them all together. Put them in a general time frame. And yes, give enough time, too, so that those that require coastal development permits can get them. Because I don't like the blanket policy of just, oh, these late submissions, getting a coastal development permit without earning it. in any way. So it's a very interesting thing and I'm glad that it's being revisited and I welcome all your participation in this because I think that our system has kind of been broken. And as far as a cap on the special events city sponsored, well, I think that's probably pretty set in stone now of what our traditional ones are, but I would be very careful about city sponsoring any more events. It is a huge, huge element of our budget. So thank you very much.

Mr. Thomas.

Yeah, I think there's a compromise that we could consider. If we want to approve a late special event An application fee could be a good policy, especially if the applications force a lot of departments to rearrange normal work. It's a cost recovery and workload fee. The city's not charging more because The applicant waited. So it's charging more because, you know, it's a quicker review schedule and they can require, you know, a lot more cord and faster coordination among public works, recreation, planning, traffic, everybody. Other cities do this, you know, and the applicant would have to be told that payment of the expedited fee does not guarantee approval and there's no refund of the fee that could reduce the applications themselves. Otherwise, an organizer might think $500 or 750 buys the right to have the event. So our residents shouldn't have to subsidize the extra cost created because an organizer waited. And you could even do a tier structure. You could say 149 to 100 days out, it's $300 fee. 50 to 100 days out, it's $500 fee. 30 to 49 days out, $750 and nothing will be approved under 30 days out. So if we want to continue to review late applications, I would definitely recommend a fee. Thank you.

Is that all we have?

We do not have any more public comment online.

Thank you very much. For the record, there's no non-staff members in the crowd. So we'll go ahead and close public comment, bring it back to the council for discussion. Item 12C, who would like to begin? Council Member Garfield.

Mr. Go, thank you very much for bringing this back. I remember our initial discussion was there's something off and I appreciate you listening and bringing it back. In my mind, what started me thinking about what was off was that we had three events on the same day. And that seemed like even if the three different parks could handle it, these events all occur during some of our busiest times of the year. So the other people who are coming to Pacific Grove or the people who live here are inconvenienced at the very least or crowded out. And so I don't think we're taking ample consideration of the displacement that occurs when we have more than one event at a time. So I would put out that we certainly don't want more than one event in the city ever. And I also had a question about one of our policy issues says that the policy says that these events are limited to things that are of benefit to the people or businesses in Pacific Grove. And I don't know what your experience is in using that. When I look at the schedule, there are a couple of items on here that do not appear to be of benefit to our businesses or our experience. And I'm talking about the ALS walk and the ALS network and the... young epileptics and while they might have an item here it's not specifically for a benefit for our population and i was wondering if you've ever used that item as a way of saying yay or nay i have not Okay. But it's, I mean, we've got it right there. And so it seems like that might be a way of making a first cut. If something's of benefit to the people that the people participating are living in Pacific Grove and the businesses that are participating are our businesses, not from somewhere else.

So may I ask a follow-up question?

Sure.

I hope you guys are open to having an open dialogue as I try to get this policy squared away. So do you recommend then maybe a text box on the application that specifies how this is a benefit to either the businesses or the people of Pacific Grove so that the event organizer during the application process has to complete that and then staff can verify and are you going to Can I write into the policy somehow that staff has the opportunity to vet and not recommend an event if they feel it's not a benefit? Because right now, that's not really the role of staff. We get an application and we bring it forward for consideration at the board and council level.

One of the things I wanted us to do is to give you the tools. that would enable at the staff level to know what your parameters are before you take it further forward. And that would be the one a day would clearly be a, I'm sorry, we already have one on this day. That's pretty cut and dried. I do recognize that. Oh yeah, sure. We have somebody who lives in Pacific Grove and so-and-so said they would sponsor us is a little far fetched. I mean, you would have to use judgment about the extent to which what they are telling you really is valid. Do you think staff would be comfortable doing that? Or would you rather have that information available and take it to the rec board?

I think I'm comfortable doing anything. You know that. Of course.

Yes. I'm sorry. But in general, I'm thinking about that.

I would still make that recommend if I made a cut to something or if like myself or, the recreation manager because it may not always be me in this position right made that suggestion we would still have to bring it forward to the board and ultimately the city council for ultimate decision not to include that but we could make that suggestion to you as the approving body because i don't think we can just as a staff level just say nope that's Granted, if it's like, if there's multiple on the same day, yes, we can work with the event organizer and try to determine different dates or so on and so forth. But. I think that unless it's written very clearly into the policy that staff has the 1st discretion at vetting out the applications. The benefit of the city that.

would have to ultimately be up to the city council i don't want to put you in an awkward position and i think it could be very awkward when an event organizer is arguing the point and staff is saying no i don't think so that could get very awkward but i would like for you to be able to use that as a criteria of whether you're recommending something or not understood i've made the note of that and try to figure out how we can incorporate that into the policy okay thank you thank you um i'm going to recognize the council member rob but i just want to throw something out there

the way i'm looking at this is kind of like uh we can get really down in on it and and kind of like tell the staff go do this and then take it to the rec board but i actually think what might be good is i the whole note not one one and only one in a day that's cut and dried as you stated i think that that would be something we could give that input but maybe we should have our our subordinate body you know vet this completely uh and then come back with some recommendations but we can i would say let's maybe do these high level ones if we can and then this is just my rec i'm just saying this to see what i don't know i may go to fall flat but then we have the rec board uh take a look at everything and give us a policy rather than try to you know wordsmith it in here uh right now i i think that the one in the day thing is a great one That could be something that's kind of an overarching principle. But now I'm going to go to Council Member Brown.

Thank you. The first thing I'd like to say is the current process, if we change the word shall to may, that would... allow us the ability to say, no, we're not going to consider it, as opposed to shall, we shall consider it. And I'm going to let Mr. Lorca give us the definition of what is is, but... That's the first thing. The second thing is I think that, in fact, I had written something similar down to one of the callers, Mr. Thomas, who talked about a fee. If we get into a very shortened cycle and we have to pull staff off of off of some project to do something else, I think that there should be additional costs that are covered. So I think that looking at some kind of a tiered structure or some kind of an expedited fee should be probably considered by the body. The only issue that I see with this one a day is we just went through car week, and we had a couple of events that had multiple events, and I'm thinking about Thursday. We had Legends of the Autobahn, and we also had Woody's in the Woods. That was two in one day in two different locations. And I don't think, since it's planned a year in advance, I don't think that that put a big strain on the staff because it was planned for well in advance. You can tell me if I'm incorrect on that. But from my perspective, I think that that is something that I'm not a big fan of absolutes. Because if you say no more than one per day, I think that could have the ability to throw some things out. I think the chamber might agree.

have some concerns about that as well.

But maybe, you know, whoever gets the first bite at the apple gets the preferred slot. For Ms. Halaby, How can we boost that info about the cutoff dates for submissions? And if we could message out the special events, here's the calendar, here's the date, all submissions are due by X, any submission after that may be considered cutoff. And there may be an additional fee and let people know, you know, don't wait until if the due date's November, don't wait until January or February. You already know you're planning it. So get it in front of the body sooner rather than later. I think that's also going to be helpful. And if we can use social media and other things to do that, is that feasible?

Yeah, it's absolutely feasible, Councilmember Rao, to further promote the timelines associated with the special events review policy on social media, on our city newsletter, the website, make that information more prominent in the future.

City manager's letter.

Absolutely.

Interim city manager's letter. Yeah. However, that shakes out. So I think, Mr. Goad, changing it off cycle events, switching it from shall to May, I think is an advantage. And then looking, you could look at some kind of additional fee structure when someone comes in and says, we're 63 days out from the targeted event date. How much more... How much more does that put on the staff and what are the costs to recover that as well? The last thing I'll say about this is that The challenge I have with who's being recovered and who isn't, you know, when we have other entities that are charging for an event and then we're asked to take on full recovery, I think that needs to be examined. And if there are people out there that are using the city sort of as a profit center that maybe we need to come to a better compromise and maybe it's not capping all of it but maybe it's capping each event at the city is willing to absorb x and anything past x is going to be on the event planner to subsidize their subsidizing and i think that I think that's my three cents.

Thank you so much. Council Member Moreland.

Thank you, Your Honor. Yes, my comments pretty much dovetail a lot with that item itself of what you just said, Council Member Rau. I'd love to understand specifically like per event when we're deciding that we're going to be taking on that cost per person who they anticipate to. When you put in your application for an event, you had to put it was the estimate of the attendees are going to per event. I'd love to see a little bit of the breakdown for the cost per person attending, because all the events that I see on here, I know that there is dramatic swings of people attending. So I'd love to see for if there's consideration, if there's a way when you're looking at this and you're reviewing this is is there a way we can add in what is the roi per attendee and having that as part of the consideration is that going to become a city sponsored event thank you okay um councilmember mcdonald

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, so thank you for bringing forward these questions. I think it's important for us to discuss because it is something that it's special events that are designed to be a benefit to our community. That said, It's a beautiful place and lots of people do want to use it. So I really appreciate having this opportunity to discuss it. Regarding concentration, I also had an issue when we had the three events proposed for the same day at the same time in a pretty small perimeter, because I think any time we're looking at special events, we have to look at traffic and parking. um so i guess it'll be a test this year to see how that plays out but we already have parking challenges on on you know any given day um so i think that it makes sense even if we had two in the same day um maybe if there are different times that wouldn't be an issue but if you're in the same vicinity and the same time that becomes an even bigger burden because we have to figure staff time And staff supplies, if we're putting up barriers, do we have enough supplies to do three separate events at three different locations? And then we would have to have additional staff at different locations versus maybe all of them being at one. So I think that's important to consider. With the Car Week one, I think that the one, the Woodies in the Woods is actually sponsored by the state, right? So that doesn't come through us. So we actually only had one city sponsored event. So I think we wouldn't necessarily have control over that. But having attended, living by one and having attended the Woodies, I know that it seemed to be not a traffic issue because the two were far enough apart and people were here for Car Week anyway. so i think you're right about maybe during car week that might be a little bit different style because it's a whole big event that has multiple different locations but in general i think paying attention to that is important um the off-cycle submissions i think is really important i think currently isn't it 150 days anyway so i don't think we would want to go if it's already challenging for staff to go less than 150 i shouldn't think we should do that I'd almost be inclined to say no off cycle because staff kind of does their event cycle and then they get to move on to other business. And so anytime you get pulled off your normal tasks, then other things fall by the wayside. So even if you recoup cost, they're not working the additional hours. so yes we could maybe recoup more in income but we aren't really recouping the time and so i think we have to weigh that um so so i think that's important and especially if a coastal development permit is required even if we decided to give some leeway and change it to may i almost say if we need cdp it should be an absolute no because of the extra steps required but it's boards it's it's not just like you submit this, we approve it, and we're good to go. I think when people submit events, they don't realize all the steps it has to go through for approval. So I do think it's fair to say no off cycle, except in special circumstances, so long as we don't get into a potential unfair kind of situation, so that it seems like there's a fair playing ground for everyone. And as far as the how much we subsidize, it's a good point because, oh, back to the point, sorry, about the events that don't seem to have a direct benefit, like they're not sponsored by a business or residents, I'm wondering if on some of these smaller events, I noticed that the ones that aren't city sponsored are almost all fundraisers. So it's almost like we're doing kind of a public benefit to allow them to have their fundraiser. And at least it's not technically costing the city. One thing that might be helpful to know in this equation is whether they're having hotel stays and food stays. So they could be bringing benefit to business, not directly through the event, but for them coming for the weekend, for example. So that's something that I don't know if council and staff would want to look at that. And there may be no way to find that out. The hotels may know if they're seeing people for certain events that are coming in and staying for the weekend, and that's boosting the TOT and the tourism. So that's the one comment I would have on maybe there is some business benefit we're not aware of. But I think we really have to be mindful of our residents. And how much to subsidize, I think that also ties into how much benefit is it to our community. Car Week's kind of a done deal. Most of the public sees it more of a nuisance than a benefit just because it's such a nightmare to go anywhere, but it's an institution. And so it's obviously something we're gonna keep doing. It's one week a year, but I think we have to be really mindful of these things. So I think the possibility of looking at, I don't know which cap is best. So it'd be helpful to get city guidance on what it would look like. And are there ones that are like charging a fee, whether it be a fee to vendors or a fee to people who attend. And if so, I understand some of those are fundraisers too. So kind of understanding, are they a fundraiser? And does it make sense to have them pay for some of the city services we're providing so the residents aren't having to be the ones that subsidize that? So thank you so much for bringing this forward for us to discuss.

i was just gonna sorry about that i'm just gonna throw in that this might be um a good thing for a board to work on we have kind of like a couple different positions that we've mr go has been taking notes we've had a couple different positions going either way on very on all three of these so it might be something we want to kick to the direct board to work on and come back with some recommendations i'm just that's what i still think that after listening to everybody council member

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for all for sharing your thoughts too. And thank you for bringing this policy for us for discussion. I had a couple of questions before I went into some ideas here, but I wanted to ask Mr. Goh, like, is more than one event a day? Can staff handle it or not, generally speaking? I mean, there's been plenty where there has been more than one event. Is that something that we can do or not?

typically if we council member typically if we have multiple events in the day they're not like If I had two car events in the day, and I understand council member Rao said we do have two car events, but the city doesn't do anything with the Asilomar events. That's all ran by state parks. It's all within their jurisdiction. But if we had two major car events in a day, that's going to be a challenge. We had two runs. That's going to be a challenge. But if I have butterfly days at Chautauqua Hall and the croquet tournament at Caledonia Park, that's not a challenge. With the sunset celebration at the lighthouse that evening, right? That's not a challenge. So those type of events. That are on the same day are different and this conversation is getting me to think about. How we would classify event a multiple day or events, multiple events in the same day. Right? And the level of city support that is needed. So, it depends on. the event, obviously, and the location. If they're at Lover's Point, they're more of a challenge. If they're downtown, they're a challenge. If they're at Caledonia Park, they're not as challenging, depending on the amount of attendees.

yeah that's what I figured, I mean the type of event matters and the second question was the so the coastal development permit is that fee or the work associated with the CDP baked into the cost that we pass on to the event organizer.

Yes, if it's a full cost recovery event.

Okay. I think I'll just summarize where I am with this. So one is, first of all, I just want to just remind the council, you guys are already aware, but we are getting into districts. And if we bottle this down to say one event per city, then the district will say, why won't we have something in my district? Why are you like precluding this? So you'll get into this argument.

I believe that district folks may say events in their district,

need to happen so i would just say leave that open-ended with respect to the uh one event per day not bottle it down but instead have the staff come back to us and say can they do it or not i would rather lean that way uh than than the other The other thing is the, I like Mr. Thomas's comment and my fellow council members comment. I view this as like primarily two, I would say distinct halves of events. One is like say peak season and the other is off peak season. And so the peak season is like everybody wants to do things, but seems like off peak season, nobody wants to do things. So why don't we have a structure where we say peak season do what folks are suggesting, which is pay a premium whenever somebody wants to do events in the peak season. And during the off peak season, I would like to see us like discounted. because we want events during the off-peak season. So perhaps that will allow us to have events all year round rather than they concentrate them in certain times only. So it's something to think of, I would say. And then the other thing is right now we have – what is called a full cost recovery and a zero kind of like recovery kind of solution. I would say this is probably a prime time for us to say, what about a partial cost recovery? Why can't we have something in between and see if that fits the bill or not? So I would say these are all ideas. I mean, at the end of the day, there needs to be appetite to do this, but I think we are certainly missing out if we're not doing things in the off peak. And we should capitalize on that at some point at least. And so my suggestion is really review things with respect to what we can do off-peak to see how we can flatten out things across the year, which will help us gain more revenue, benefit tourism, et cetera, all the good stuff.

Anyway, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Barton.

Amelia.

Thank you. This has already gone to the Recreation Board.

Am I correct, Mr. Goh? No, it has not. This was asked directly by the City Council to bring it back to you for consideration, but I think it would be prudent for you to work with them, take something to them, and then go have a dialogue with them with almost like a red line version from what I'm hearing tonight.

I look through all the events and, you know, which one do you suddenly get cost recovery? You know, do you want to, for example, let's just use one here, butterfly days. That's a big Pacific Grove Unified School District. Everybody's downtown for that. I'm just saying maybe I think this has already been done already. I would bring it back to the recreation board. They'll probably put together a subcommittee to look at all the events. And I was looking at peak seasons. What is a peak season? I mean, it goes through... July 4th through December, you know, maybe we eliminate the holiday parade. then you will hear all about that no we're not going to do that but uh i i think the recreation commission should be able to look at this and most likely i know them because i'm a liaison to them they'll they'll put a subcommittee together to look at all the events um so i just think um you know this has been going on for how long is this event special events been going on since i've been

I've been responsible for the Recreation Department since 2010, and I've been, so this is my 17th year of bringing forward special events.

The special events, though, has been pretty much standard each year. Am I correct, Mr. Goad? Am I right on that? Maybe a couple have been added to it, but that's why I think it's important to have the Recreation Commission. That's what we have them for. to look at this and bring some of these thoughts back. I, I mean, I looked at all the dates and everything. There's a couple of events here that overlap each other, but Mr. Paduri here explained, sounded like you could handle a couple of events if they occur on the same day. Am I, is that, is that what I heard?

Depending on the,

the type of event and the location and the attendees yes okay okay i that's that's my recommendation bring it back to the city uh recreation board that's what they're here for and uh let them um work on it and they may come up with some other different ideas yeah there's uh i agree yeah you know

thank you um so uh just to summarize i think we need to bring this to some kind of a resolution tonight so um we've heard of different perspectives i don't think i hate to say it mr go but i don't think you're going to get a red line out of it since you have two or three different positions on each of the items so my recommendation would be uh that we send it to the record for all purposes with our notes that from this meeting and that uh that would be the the the direction i would i would give them i would give them the let them run with it check out all the events if they want to they could even get into the the brass tax of the cost of the event or kind of what mayor tim had said so maybe that exploration needs to happen maybe it's going to take some time and uh you could you could kind of look into it and uh i know there's i know there's other hands up but that's what i'd like to do so if if there's support for that that's what i would recommend tonight councilmember garfield

I appreciate the comments on we really need to honor what the staff feels they can manage. That's a very important part of it. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that these events impact the people who live here that aren't part of it. And so I would just add that as a consideration of maybe the staff can manage two events, but the community might not. So I just want our neighbors to be considered as well.

Yes, Council Member Burrell.

And I think that brings a great point because although like the woodies in the woods, is it a Solomar? It still brought a significant amount of traffic. It didn't look unmanageable, but our Pacific Grove PD still has to manage that traffic flow. They still have to, you know, look for bad drivers and illegal parking and all of those things that happen on our streets, even though they're surrounding traffic. So, you know, maybe even coordination with Asilomar to say, if you guys are having events, maybe they just need to give us a heads up so that we can also have a schedule that says they're having this X event. It does create a lot. Now, some of these events, like I look at the Monterey Bay Half Marathon, and it's a multi-day event for our town. And I know that our hotels have a significant uptick over that weekend. Our restaurants get a lot of business during that weekend. So, you know, although you can say, well, it doesn't bring much to the city in and of itself, it brings a lot of money into the city. So I think there's got to be a balance. Mr. Lorca, did you have any thoughts on the shall and may and giving them an out to say no?

May would give them more discretion to do so. Yeah, they wouldn't be compelled to do to approve or deny something if there was some discretion there. Of course, they would need some parameters around what that discretion would be.

So I'm going to just make a motion that we send this to the Recreation Board with our notes and with issues and sub issues that we've already explored. All of the issues that you described in the report we've kind of gone into and provided arguments on both sides on some of them. So I would say we send this to the Rec Board and ask them to prepare proposed amendments to such. That's my motion. Thank you. We have a second by Garfield. Good discussion.

Yeah, just one quick comment is I agree with the idea of bringing it to the rec board. I think it would be helpful for them to understand as well where it becomes an issue. And I'm talking more for the late submissions. I think it's important that they understand exactly how that impacts staff because I think that will help inform their discussion well. Thanks.

Okay, any further discussion? Okay, take a roll call vote, please, Madam Clerk. My motion was to direct it to the rec board with our notes on the issues.

Thank you.

Field?

Aye.

Council Member McDonnell? Aye. Council Member Paduri?

Aye.

Council Member Rao? Aye. Council Member Mervyn?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Mueller?

Aye.

Mayor Smith?

Aye.

Motion carries 7-0.

All right. Thank you very much for the report. Thank you, Mr. Goh. That was well done. I thought you guys did a great job encapsulating the actual issues at play and keeping it rule of three. So thank you so much for that. And we'll look forward to hearing from the rec board on it. And finally, our last item of the night, agenda item 13A, overnight parking of trailers and oversized vehicles. And I will recognize my colleague, Councilman Garfield.

Thank you, Your Honor. Do we have the presentation yet? Okay. Let me know.

Yes, we do. Give me one second.

There we go. I have it. Yes. There we go.

Thank you. So I've heard from many people and seen with my own eyes, and I know that I've talked to Councilmember Rao about it, and I've talked to Chief Day about it. We've seen trailers parking for weeks on our city streets. We've seen RVs you can't see around crowded together, providing a safety hazard. We've seen visitors in their RVs, very large RVs, popping out a bedroom or a kitchen or something and expanding the footprint, making it hard to get around them. We also know that those folks in the, I refer to it as the $250,000 RV from Texas, is not staying at a hotel. They're not dining at our restaurants. They may be going to the grocery store. So they're getting a free vacation and they're inconveniencing the people who live here and the other people who are visiting. I wanted to just be very clear that what I don't want to inflict on Pacific Grove is Pacific Grove being a storage lot or a campground. And so wanted to bring some of the issues to us to decide what to do about it. And I would suggest that we are going to give direction to traffic and safety. to continue to work on this because I think that's our best bet for coming back with this. So I started looking at this ordinance 17-021 and it's a mess. It combines two other ordinances. It is the ordinance that eliminated the previous ban on unhitched trailers parking on the streets. So that has to be undone as well. And it may be that this 17-021 just needs to start over again and get clean, clear language. So what I wanted to do was look at what the goals would be for this. And if we can go to the next slide. Given what we've heard from the community in the letters we've received, and what we've seen as we walk around or drive around, I would like to suggest some goals of banning unhitched trailers or empty RVs parked on the streets as being stored, period, with a permitted exception for a specific use. An RV that's going to be in use, you need to clean it, you need to store it, you need to staff it. stock it you need to put food in it when you come back from your camping trip you need to clean it up that's a period of time you can easily get a permit for it and at various periods of time we've had that permitting system working so I think we need to reactivate it um we've also discovered in looking at and for me talking to the police who are trying to enforce this there are several different enforcement time periods so for instance the parking along the coast is eliminated is eliminated from midnight to five but the overnight parking about not camping in your car is from ten to five and so those are conflicting The police say that they're getting in arguments with people about which one they're enforcing, and so it makes enforcement difficult. So I'm going to suggest that a consistent time of 10 to 5, 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., might be a better bet for consistency, for signage, and knowing what's being enforced. the overnight camping or occupancy or being in a car or RV or camper overnight needs better signage because we are having complaints of vehicles where people are camping near Washington Park. Well, when people are in these campers, the smaller campers, There's no bathroom in them. So just thinking about that. And in Washington Park, when people are cooking, and I've seen them barbecuing or pulling out the hibachi, we are setting up a really risky situation. In addition, we get complaints about blight, noise, and a sense of safety. So I think that that's something that needs to be resolved as well in specific locations. And then, as I've already mentioned, having a... Prohibition against a legally parked RV, which is fine to be here, it's legal, bumping out its extensions is something that should be prohibited. And the question is, do we need to provide more specific parking restrictions like we do with tour buses? We already say tour buses cannot park. I think they can park at Lovers Point, but cannot park after Lovers Point until you get to Point Pinos. So there's very specific areas where oversized vehicles like a tour bus can park. We might consider doing that as well with oversized vehicles. Then going on to the next one, some considerations include the size. If we can go to the next slide. So first of all, with folks that we have living in our community in their cars or their campers who have no place else to go, this is not a vacation for them. This is their living room. We need to make sure that our police who are enforcing them These restrictions have options for folks. So it's not intended to rouse them or harass them. It is intended to have an opportunity to give people resources. The 211 call that United Way staffs is one parking program's referral to different places in the community and tapping into the outreach that's funded in Monterey County that we may not be taking advantage of. A question I have about coastal access. We've gotten letters about we shouldn't have RVs in our community, period, ever. I don't think we can do that. I think that coastal access requires people to be able to park a vehicle during the daytime near the access that they want.

But we could find out.

if there are restrictions. Letters have been written saying that in Carmel they restrict it, or in Marina they restrict it. So I would ask the traffic and safety people to look at what alternatives exist in the other communities that are dealing with this. I have learned that the 22-foot length, which is mentioned in that ordinance, is the state definition of an oversized vehicle. Our current ordinance does not specifically state that hitches, towing, the barbecue they have lashed on the back of their van should be included in the 22 feet description. And it seems to me it should be. In terms of putting an enforcement process in place for a new ordinance, I would defer to the police. They can give us the best direction about whether they should give a warning first, whether that should be a first citation. Currently, the enforcement of the existing ordinance says that the first occurrence is $100, the second occurrence is $200, and the third occurrence is $500, followed by towing. I don't know if that's the right answer, but that's what we currently have in place. And so that's my review of this messy ordinance.

No, that's fair. Okay, I'm going to take it out to the public. Anyone online wishing to comment on this item?

We do not have any online public comments.

All right, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Bring it back to the council for discussion and action through the recommendations. First, number one is to direct staff to work with the Traffic Safety Commission in return with suggested ordinance changes. And I agree with that, the recommendation tonight. And I will point out that Council Member Garfield is correct that if we have ordinances that are lacking in foundational elements and they should be sorted out and actually dealt with while we hit them because it's like you always we we change up here staff you know things change but um you know you want to make everything better every time you find an error you want to make it better for the next person for the next uh group so i think we if we find that there's some issues let's get them all cleaned up um so i'd be in favor of all that council member

Thank you. Thank you to Council Member Garfield who has brought this up on the agenda. And as she said, we've talked at length over the last few months about this and how do we get some consistency because the ordinance is kind of a hot mess. On the travel blogs and people on the internet, Pacific Grove is a free place to stay. And they'll tell, you know, you can look them up on, you know, do a Google search, best places to park an RV in the Monterey Peninsula. And I think that that's something we have to address because it doesn't seem to be getting better. It seems to only be getting worse. And now we're having situations where it's overflowing into George Washington Park and other residential pieces. I do agree with Council Member Garfield that this is not an opportunity for us to address to rouse people that are unhoused. There are safe spaces for people to park. There are plenty of places that I know that we've done a little impromptu interview with a couple of the police, the police officers. And I think the police officers need additional training. And I think that's something that we should count on Chief Day to put together so that we have additional training so that everybody's aware of the services so that they can help people out. And also I feel very strongly that the fine should be commiserate with an average hotel rate in Pacific Grove plus the TOT tax. And if we say that it's $179 is the average hotel rate in PG and we add the TOT tax on that, The very first fee should be $200 and going up from there. Right now, I think the parking fee is $40.

If it's a parking violation, $48, I think.

And so I think that we need to look at making sure that if people are coming into our town, they're not going to stay in our hotels, they're not going to eat in our restaurants, they should be paying a fine that is commiserate with what they would have to pay. Now, I think there's already on the books a provision that if you are staying at a friend's house and you just need to park an RV for a couple of days, you can go to the PGPD and they'll give you a permit to park. So, you know, there is reasonable accommodation for people that are passing through and visiting family and those types of things. Those are not the people we're talking about. We're talking about the $300,000 Mercedes on Ocean View that's taking up three parking spaces with a pop out and a grill. And so I do agree that this has to be done. And I think recommendations one and three are very appropriate moving forward.

Thank you very much, Council Member Paduri.

Yes, thank you, Council Member Garfield, for bringing this and for digging through some of these items, which is a thing in itself. I hate this ordinance. So I'm supportive of what you recommended. I would just to echo what you also said earlier, i don't know what the administrative burden is for some of these items to be enforced and i always see this as uh enforcement is if you're kind of like it's it's like you take care of the problem on one street it comes to an adjacent street So what are you doing there? So it's almost like we need to make this consistent throughout the city, which means that the signage that you mentioned, which needs to be consistent, needs to be consistent across the city so that everybody's aware how this needs to work. But I'm supportive. I just want to see what kind of ideas or thoughts that the PD might have with respect to enforcement, which will allow us to better kind of like see how to kind of tweak this, but otherwise, um, uh, thank you for bringing this forward in one and three looks good to go. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Um, councilman McDonald.

Thank you, mayor. Yeah. And I, I appreciate this as well. Uh, I have seen the bump outs and it is a problem because this isn't a campground. They will bump out at Point Pinos and they will actually block the coastal trail. And that's obviously not acceptable. And I'm sure if the Coastal Commission was aware, they would probably have an issue with it as well. I think, and it would help to have clarification on this. So the The 12 to 5 is for all vehicles. The 10 to 5 is the ordinance for regular cars. I bring this up because on the rare night that we have a clear sky and there's some kind of celestial event, we are among many who actually go out and park and watch, but then we leave at midnight. So I know it's not a frequent thing, but it is a common thing for people to come out and try and do that when the rare opportunity permits. And so I just want us to kind of be cognizant of that before we block everything. One from parking after 10 PM, because then our entire coast would be non accessible for that purpose. So just wanted to bring that one up. The other concern about having people camping on the beaches is we have caught people having campfires on the beaches as well. And it is, after all, a marine sanctuary. So I think that having more awareness to that helps prevent that problem as well. The... And I really appreciate that we're all looking at this from a not meant to penalize people who are unhoused. I appreciate the letters that came in as well saying that we don't want this to become something that leads to what could be a minor problem for somebody who has a $200,000 RV becomes a life-changing event, a $100 ticket for somebody who's unhoused and has no means to pay for that. But this brings up something I've been We brought it before. Nothing's gone with it. And I don't know who would implement this, but we have an overnight program for women, but for men. So I don't know if there's some way for us to further pursue that, because I think if we're going to be asking people to move around and vacate where they are with no place to go to refer them to. that becomes a challenge because a lot of the shelters, you couldn't get there that same night and they're still there. So if we could guide them to someplace where they could actually go for the evening, I think that'll be important because the reality is as the economy continues to impact a lot of people, we may have more and more people in their cars. I just think we really have to honor the fact that this is a lot of people's reality and we want to be compassionate about that and provide options for them. And I do like the idea of the warning first, partly because not everybody does know, but unless it's an unhoused situation, I think a warning of this is the regulation and we need you to leave now would be appropriate versus giving them that one night free. And I think it does make sense to make the cost commensurate with a hotel stay because that will be less encouraging for people to come and stay for free. than to just book a hotel room in the first place. So I don't know legally what the requirements are. I know the state sets certain parameters on what you're allowed to charge for tickets, but maybe if we, it would be helpful for the rec board to, sorry, the traffic safety commission to know, do we have the leeway to set those fees on our own or are there certain parameters that we have to work with? Thank you.

Thank you for bringing this. I'm in support of it. A couple of things I wanted to mention. You took the words out of my mouth about the homeless. So that, but I also wanted to mention that in, I'm sure it's not just Del Monte Park or in the area I live in, but I've had some complaints where some people they've got their four-wheel drive truck, which is cool, and attached to it is a pretty handyman's trailer, okay? But even with that handyman's trailer, Pete, just talk to Del Monte Park. I'm not going to give you the location, but it's in Del Monte Park, and they have to edge out to look to the left, and then someone's coming off to the right. So I think something that needs to be included in the ordinance about detached utility trailers should not be in the way of traffic. and that could be something with the traffic commission can look at but i also wanted to bring up that um i i understand the the bump out and so forth that but uh i i these people just didn't spend 9.95 to buy a big trailer you know they bought quite a lot of money for some people some people and i think it's important to be sensitive to that um and we don't want to uh get rid of all the people who have parked their rvs that are spending money in our restaurants if they leave and or going to the beach house or whatever, wherever it's going to be. So I'm all in all, I truly believe the traffic commission and I do believe they're going to have a subcommittee since I'm the latest on to that to, to deal with to deal with this particular ordinance. So I'm in favor of it.

So, okay. I'm going to go ahead and make a motion on recommendations one and three. Thank you very much. Second by Raul, any further discussion?

Should I take this to the traffic commission and do a little presentation with them? I've got the notes here and I don't know that anybody else took notes. So, how do we transfer this?

I was going to say what what you should do is bring the notes from the meeting. to the traffic commission, have them... You can deliver it. You can deliver it. Or let's see, the staff member is, I think, Commander Delfino. Yeah. So it would be good to, yeah, work with, yeah, myself or Commander Delfino.

So, okay, that's good because we also wanted the police input. Yeah, okay, so...

would be good because she's the liaison.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So any further discussion before we vote? All right. We'll take a roll call vote. Go ahead.

Council Member Garfield.

Aye.

Council Member McDonnell. Aye. Council Member Paduri. Aye. Mayor Pro Temmelian.

Aye.

Council Member Paduri. Aye. Council Member Merlin?

Aye.

Mayor Smith?

Yes.

Motion carries 7-0.

All right. Very good.

That's a number out. I know I'm missing somebody.

Six plus one equals seven.

Okay. All right. That brings us to the end of the agenda. That completes all the items for the night. Thank you, everyone, for coming and sticking with us. We appreciate it, and we'll see you on the next one. And we welcome Mr. Rear for the next meeting. Thank you very much. Meeting adjourned.